
51
THURSDAY
May 8
About Family (John 19:25–27)
A young woman joined David Koresh’s ill-fated group back in the
1990s and was at the group’s Waco, Texas, compound when her
mother passed away in Canada. As she prepared to leave for the
funeral, the charismatic guru intercepted her plans. No need, he said,
to expend time and funds for such mundane purposes; there are more
important things to do on the compound. She never went.
Read
the following sayings of Jesus: Matt. 10:34–37, 12:46–50, Luke
9:59–62, 12:49–53, 14:26. How would you answer the charge that
they tend to give aid and comfort to charismatics like Koresh (and
others) who denigrate natural family ties and loyalties?
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“This reconfiguration of f
amily values—driving a wedge between
earthly and heavenly, . . . becomes a major theme in Luke’s gospel.
. . . In addition to statements embracing all who keep God’s word as
true kinfolk (8:19–21; 11:27, 28), . . . Luke’s Jesus lays down the
shocking mandate to ‘hate father and mother’—even to the point of
leaving a dead father to bury himself!—as a condition for discipleship
(9:57–62; 14:25).”—F. Scott Spencer,
What Did Jesus Do? (Harrisburg,
Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2003), p. 35.
Jesus’ statements sound harsh to the modern ear, to be sure. But are
they really so, when you understand what they mean? In the case of
letting “the dead bury their own dead”
(Luke 9:60, NIV) for example,
had the father of the potential disciple actually died? Or was that per-
son saying, in effect, “I will follow you after my father dies, and I have
secured all the property”? And how should we understand Jesus’state-
ment in Luke 14:26 that no one can be His disciple who “ ‘does not
hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sis-
ters—yes, even his own life’ ”
(NIV)? As pointed out in yesterday’s
lesson, the Matthew parallel throws light on Jesus’ meaning here, by
Jesus talking in the Matthew text about those who love father and
mother and wife, etc., more than Him
(see Matt. 10:37). “In the Bible,
‘to hate,’ often should be understood simply as . . . ‘to love less.’ ”—
The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 5, p. 811. The idea Jesus was trying
to get across was the importance of putting God first.
Oftentimes our familial bonds ar
e the str
ong
est earthly bonds
that we know, and rightly so. Why, though, must God always
come first, even before family, if need be?